Poll Finds Strong Interest for NFL Draft Plus Spring Football/UFL

Fan interest in the NFL Draft, (shown live on ABC, ESPN, and NFL Network in addition to huge in-person attendance in Detroit), is on par with fan interest in the NBA, NCAA football and NCAA basketball, (as determined by previous Seton Hall polling).  

Among America’s general population, 35 percent said they planned to watch at least part of the draft, with the numbers rising to 40 percent among casual fans, 52 percent among self-described sports fans, 55 percent among those who identified as NFL fans and 76 percent among avid fans.

A rather astounding 20 percent of the general population even said they would be attending "watch parties" either in-person or online. To put this into context, in February 2024 among the general public 43 percent said they would be attending a Super Bowl watch party. Among sports fans the number of those who said they would attend an NFL Draft watch party rose to 30 percent and for avid fans 44 percent. 

"The evolution of the NFL Draft into a major American event is a testament to the public’s insatiable appetite for football and world-class marketing," said Seton Hall Professor Charles Grantham, director of the Center for Sport Management. "The NFL brand is king. They’re not even playing games right now and more than a quarter of a million people showed up in Detroit to witness the first round."

These were among the findings of a Seton Hall Sports Poll conducted April 22-25 among 1,528 adults across the country. The poll, which is sponsored by Seton Hall University’s Stillman School of Business, featured a national representative sample from YouGov weighted on U.S. Census Bureau figures for age, ethnicity, education, income and geography and has a margin of error of +/-3.0 percent.

United Football League Finds Favor
So enamored of football is the USA, that even spring football, the new UFL, drew high approval numbers, with 73 percent of avid fans saying they "like the idea of pro football in the spring months" (60 percent of sports fans, 43 percent of the general population agreed). 

NFL Nexus
The connection of the UFL to the NFL is apparently not lost on the public. Among avid fans, 81 percent said yes to "I like the idea of a development league for the NFL, where more players get to demonstrate their talents and new rule changes can be tested." Pointedly, only 10 percent of avid fans disagreed, resulting in a positive margin of more than 8 to 1 for the proposition. Among sports fans those who approved led by a 70-11 margin. Among the general population 53 percent approved, while just 16 percent said no – a still robust margin of more than 3 to 1. 

"Those numbers speak volumes and bode well for the UFL,” said Daniel Ladik, marketing professor in the Stillman School and chief methodologist to the Poll. “Rarely do we see margins like that among sports fans. It’s obvious that there is desire for spring football and a developmental league, now we’ll see if the UFL can satisfy that demand."

Questions and charted breakdowns may be found here. 

About the Poll
The Seton Hall Sports Poll, conducted regularly since 2006, is performed by the Sharkey Institute within the Stillman School of Business. This poll was conducted online by YouGov Plc. using a national representative sample weighted according to gender, age, ethnicity, education, income and geography, based on U.S. Census Bureau figures. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S residents. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls. The Seton Hall Sports Poll has been chosen for inclusion in iPoll by Cornell’s Roper Center for Public Opinion Research and its findings have been published everywhere from USA Today, ESPN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, AP, and Reuters to CNBC, NPR, Yahoo Finance, Fox News and many points in between. 

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